Maria Hanif Al-Qassim

Maria Hanif Al-Qassim

Over the years, feminism has become a term largely associated with being both female and liberal, and that has especially been the case in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It is a term that clerics and preachers have shunned and dubbed a Western concept, a conspiracy to destroy the region’s social fabric and exploit women, among other things. However, it is my belief that Islam is in fact the cradle of feminism, and possibly one of the very few religions that recognizes the important role of women, making them equal in every sense to their male counterparts....

Tufail Ahmad

Tufail Ahmad

If the government is not electorally motivated on this issue, it should introduce a Muslim family reform bill which should outlaw all forms of unilateral divorce, Halala, Mehr ('dowry' given to the bride), and address issues such as maintenance to divorced wives and child custody. Or, it can stop playing Hindu-Muslim politics by enacting a Uniform Civil Code. For now, the Modi government is engaged solely in propaganda and electoral politics on the triple Talaq issue….

Robert J. Burrowes, New Age Islam

Robert J. Burrowes, New Age Islam
06 December 2

Perpetrators of violence learn their craft in childhood. If you inflict violence on a child, they learn to inflict violence on others. The terrorist suffered violence as a child. The political leader who wages war suffered violence as a child. The man who inflicts violence on women suffered violence as a child. The corporate executive who exploits working class people and/or those who live in Africa, Asia or Central/South America suffered violence as a child. The racist or religious bigot suffered violence as a child. The individual who perpetrates violence in the home, in the schoolyard or on the street suffered violence as a child....

Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy

Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD) supports legislation to declare instant triple talaq as an illegal act with serious consequences for the husband who defies the Supreme Court’s verdict and the law of the land. However, it strongly opposes the reported move of the Union government to criminalise the practice, punishable with 3 years in jail plus fine....

Tahir Mahmood

Tahir Mahmood

Religious leaders have wasted precious time available for stopping by their own edict the “bad in theology good in law” practice of triple divorce. In my opinion, the object can be achieved better by enacting a law to insert new provisions into the two existing Muslim law statutes —…

Hajrah Mumtaz

Hajrah Mumtaz

And yet, against that is the fact that a young woman was recently telling me about several of her female cousins’ elopements, girls that lived outside of urban areas. The reason, she said, was that they weren’t able to stand up to patriarchy when it presented them with an arranged marriage. Some of them, I was told, were hunted down. The others were ostracised. In the case of one cousin, Swara was suggested as a way out by the groom’s family, but the family/Jirga jury was out on that....

Sheema Khan

Sheema Khan

The postcolonial period had ushered in a more egalitarian view, in which men and women are on the same moral plane before God. However, this approach has had uneven acceptance. Very rarely will men give up their privileged position to be on equal footing with women. Yet Muslim women still insist on gender justice....

Leila Alikarami

Saudi Arabia appears to have opened up opportunities for women by realizing that the country cannot advance until women’s rights are improved in the kingdom. But it is clear that in the case of Iran, women are unlikely to be able to effectively continue the advancement of their rights until religious figures change their outlook toward women and the government demonstrates political will to engage in such reforms, too....